Detroit Public Schools: Photoessay
Soul-crushing, creepy, effed-up, and sobering warning are the better terms, but I’ll use the more poetic poignant and heart-rending to describe this photoessay by Sweet Juniper!, the husband-and-wife photog team who shot this series of amazing photographs of abandoned public school buildings in Detroit.
The first series I found via dy/dan, a wholesome and education-oriented personage. Unfortunately, the photoessay itself is on the less-than-educational (although one could argue that it’s educational to someone out there) Vice Magazine site. However, it’s worth the naughtiness to see the photos.
The second series, showing an abandoned book repository, is just the wholesome, derelict-state-of-education-today subject matter. Much better to witness the downfall of a city and its school system than naughty bits and foul language.
From photographer James Griffioen’s essay:
This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste. The interior has been ravaged by fires and the supplies that haven’t burned have been subjected to 20 years of Michigan weather. To walk around this building transcends the sort of typical ruin-fetishism and “sadness” some get from a beautiful abandoned building. This city’s school district is so impoverished that students are not allowed to take their textbooks home to do homework, and many of its administrators are so corrupt that every few months the newspapers have a field day with their scandals, sweetheart-deals, and expensive trips made at the expense of a population of children who can no longer rely on a public education to help lift them from the cycle of violence and poverty that has made Detroit the most dangerous city in America. To walk through this ruin, more than any other, I think, is to obliquely experience the real tragedy of this city; not some sentimental tragedy of brick and plaster, but one of people.
Further Reading:
The Travails of Detroit
In June, Detroit to Shut Down 34 Schools
Life Goes On
Posted by Alexa Harrington
Amazing and unreal. Thank You Alexa.